5 ms·

Personnally, I would also love to have a second phone like this one. Cheap, simple, just to "phone&browse". No apps. I live in France

by tmilard 12y ago

gambiting 12y ago
Not to be rude, but what stops you from buying an old android phone/iphone 3GS/any older windows phone? I can almost guarantee that they will be faster for browsing than any of these new ultra-cheap Firefox OS running phones.
- regularfry 12y ago
  You might think that, but you've got to be careful not to let old phones update. I've got a Galaxy S2 I use mainly as a wifi hotspot with a data-only sim, and while it used to have a pretty snappy UI, these days it really crawls, almost to the point of being unusable. To be honest I've not looked particularly hard at why this is, but how well a phone runs a browser, for instance, isn't frozen in time when the phone is bought.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    You are absolutely right, but a phone that is few years old and has 512MB of ram is going to load pages faster than this new $35 firefox OS phone which only has 128MB.
    - regularfry 12y ago
      Could go either way, I reckon. I've got no idea what the relative CPU speeds are, for a start. At some point the newer phone will start to make sense.
  - mozmark 12y ago
    Not letting your phone update maybe isn't a great solution if you care about security at all. Users shouldn't have to choose between 'affordable' and 'currently supported'; I hope Firefox OS can help here.
    - regularfry 12y ago
      You're absolutely right - it's a real pain.
bcj 12y ago
I purchased a developer Peak when they first came out. I used it as my primary phone for about a month on two different occasions when I was between phones. In theory it was nice to just have a basic, but in practice I had to tether it to my computer or Nexus 7 for anything more than a quick text or Facebook message. The OS isn't there yet (though 2.0 is getting there) and the touchscreen is a thing that constantly needed to be fought against. What I found I was really longing for was a small dumbphone that had LTE so I could tether when I needed to get work done/browse the web
agumonkey 12y ago
I recently got a KitKat phone, and felt instantaneously trapped in Google Play land (no improvement over Apple Appstore I guess), not a good feeling. A 'web' based OS would be a nice thing to try.
- freehunter 12y ago
  What's the difference between Android with a web browser and a Firefox OS phone? Literally nothing. And people ignored WebOS when it was released in favor of Android, even though WebOS used HTML and Javascript for apps and was so hackable you could load a new kernel over USB, and Palm themselves gave you directions how on their official website.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    Well, Android Apps run on Dalvik/ART, which is not HTML5/js but I agree, it's not a real difference, except in FirefoxOS marketing strategy, targetting ultra low end devices with heavy (heavier than ART) apps will result in an absurdly unusable system.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      Well what I was trying to say is, Firefox OS apps are just web pages. Saying that an Android user is locked into the Play store unlike a Firefox OS user seems silly, because you don't need a single Android app installed to mimic the functionality of Firefox OS. All you need is the browser.
      - icebraining 12y ago
        No, because Firefox OS apps are web pages with benefits :) In particular, they can be bundled to be used offline, and they can get access to a whole host of device APIs, which I don't believe are accessible to any web apps on Chrome for Android: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Build/App_permissions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Build/App_permissio...
- 12y ago
Yoric 12y ago
Go to your local Leclerc or Darty, or by at LDLC, CDiscount, etc :)

Personnally, I would also love to have a second phone like this one. Cheap, simple, just to "phone&browse". No apps. I live in France

by tmilard 12y ago

Personnally, I would also love to have a second phone like this one. Cheap, simple, just to "phone&browse". No apps. I live in France

gambiting 12y ago

Not to be rude, but what stops you from buying an old android phone/iphone 3GS/any older windows phone? I can almost guarantee that they will be faster for browsing than any of these new ultra-cheap Firefox OS running phones.

regularfry 12y ago
You might think that, but you've got to be careful not to let old phones update. I've got a Galaxy S2 I use mainly as a wifi hotspot with a data-only sim, and while it used to have a pretty snappy UI, these days it really crawls, almost to the point of being unusable. To be honest I've not looked particularly hard at why this is, but how well a phone runs a browser, for instance, isn't frozen in time when the phone is bought.
- gambiting 12y ago
  You are absolutely right, but a phone that is few years old and has 512MB of ram is going to load pages faster than this new $35 firefox OS phone which only has 128MB.
  - regularfry 12y ago
    Could go either way, I reckon. I've got no idea what the relative CPU speeds are, for a start. At some point the newer phone will start to make sense.
- mozmark 12y ago
  Not letting your phone update maybe isn't a great solution if you care about security at all. Users shouldn't have to choose between 'affordable' and 'currently supported'; I hope Firefox OS can help here.
  - regularfry 12y ago
    You're absolutely right - it's a real pain.

bcj 12y ago

I purchased a developer Peak when they first came out. I used it as my primary phone for about a month on two different occasions when I was between phones. In theory it was nice to just have a basic, but in practice I had to tether it to my computer or Nexus 7 for anything more than a quick text or Facebook message. The OS isn't there yet (though 2.0 is getting there) and the touchscreen is a thing that constantly needed to be fought against. What I found I was really longing for was a small dumbphone that had LTE so I could tether when I needed to get work done/browse the web

agumonkey 12y ago

I recently got a KitKat phone, and felt instantaneously trapped in Google Play land (no improvement over Apple Appstore I guess), not a good feeling. A 'web' based OS would be a nice thing to try.

freehunter 12y ago
What's the difference between Android with a web browser and a Firefox OS phone? Literally nothing. And people ignored WebOS when it was released in favor of Android, even though WebOS used HTML and Javascript for apps and was so hackable you could load a new kernel over USB, and Palm themselves gave you directions how on their official website.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  Well, Android Apps run on Dalvik/ART, which is not HTML5/js but I agree, it's not a real difference, except in FirefoxOS marketing strategy, targetting ultra low end devices with heavy (heavier than ART) apps will result in an absurdly unusable system.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    Well what I was trying to say is, Firefox OS apps are just web pages. Saying that an Android user is locked into the Play store unlike a Firefox OS user seems silly, because you don't need a single Android app installed to mimic the functionality of Firefox OS. All you need is the browser.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      No, because Firefox OS apps are web pages with benefits :) In particular, they can be bundled to be used offline, and they can get access to a whole host of device APIs, which I don't believe are accessible to any web apps on Chrome for Android: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Build/App_permissions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Build/App_permissio...
12y ago

Yoric 12y ago

Go to your local Leclerc or Darty, or by at LDLC, CDiscount, etc :)